Comments on: Amazon The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? Amazon Doubles Down on Exclusivity

By: Jamie

Jamie — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:14:05 +0000

I’ve used Meatgrinder several times for my books and the hardest part was learning not to use the tab key and using the ruler tool instead. My first book took me 6-7 hours to re-format for Meatgrinder, my second took 5 minutes.

I agree there is a learning curve, but it’s relatively minor unless your book is graphic heavy.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:11:43 +0000

I suppose that’s possible, but Paypal is able to transfer funds to my non-American bank account in 3-5 business days with no fees (until I withdraw money anyways), so why can’t Amazon?

Amazon could do it too, but they seem to consider the States as the only market in the world. It may make sense right now, but in the long run, that’ll come back to bite them.

By: Tom Simon

Tom Simon — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 05:11:05 +0000

That’s nice. I considered using Smashwords to distribute to Apple, but decided against it for very nasty technical reasons. To wit:

The Smashwords epub for my first book contains a nasty formatting bug. One chapter overrides the reader’s choice of font and size and defaults to Times New Roman at a fixed size, which makes a ghastly contrast with the rest of the book. I have not been able to replicate this error in any other EPUB reader or app. Nor have I been able to find anything different in the source code for that chapter that would account for the error.

I had already put my manuscript through the Nuclear Option when this error appeared. I ran it through again, went through the whole business of tediously restoring the necessary formatting by hand, and when I was done, the error was still there — but in a different chapter.

I left an email through the Smashwords site to your tech-support people, asking for help identifying and debugging the problem. This was in August. I still haven’t heard back from them.

Whereas if I dump my manuscript into Pages and export an EPUB from that, it uploads via iTunes Connect without a hitch and displays flawlessly.

tl;dr: The product generated by the Meatgrinder is unfit for use on an iOS device. No ‘big promo’ in Australia and New Zealand (or anywhere else) can possibly make up for that.

By: Mark Coker

Mark Coker — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:44:13 +0000

HG and Tom, you can upload direct to Apple or other retailers, though often there are advantages to reaching them through a distributor like Smashwords. See this news, just out today, talks about a big promo Apple’s doing in Australia and New Zealand. It’s only available to authors who are distributing to Apple through Smashwords – http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/12/apple-launches-breakout-books-promotion.html

By: C. R. Reaves

C. R. Reaves — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 06:26:13 +0000

I actually use SumatraPDF to read PDF files now. I’ve had too many problems with Adobe.

For what it’s worth, low-end Kobos, at least, are horrible to read PDFs on. I’m lucky when the text all fits on the screen. Most of the cases, when it does all fit, the text is exceptionally tiny.

That said, on AllRomance, PDF is my third most popular selling filetype, and it’s not third after EPUB and MOBI by much.

By: Will

Will — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 02:31:58 +0000

That’s the fault of the Kindle app, not the format.
Oh, and Preview does allow me to change the font size. If I have to, I can convert it to text and change the font manually.

By: Tom Simon

Tom Simon — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:53:18 +0000

No, PDF is NOT fine unless I’m reading something like House of Leaves. I just told you, PDF does not allow you to reflow text, change fonts, change font sizes, or any of the other things that allow an ebook to be legible on a phone.

HTML doesn’t work either, because neither the Kindle app nor the iBooks app (nor any other ebook-reading app that I am aware of) is designed to open naked HTML files. Now, the internal markup of both MOBI and EPUB is done in HTML, but the HTML file is only one part of the package. There are also things like artwork and the machine-readable table of contents, which would be stripped out if you reduced a book to a raw HTML file of the text.

By: Terrence OBrien

Terrence OBrien — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 01:45:49 +0000

Well, an author can determine he is doing well with Select today by looking at his results with his own lying eyes. The future is speculation. The eyes trump some guy’s theory.

I have no problem with exploiting the short term. Long term success is often simply a series of short term successes. How long do we wait before applauding short term success? The long term view is often an excuse for poor results today.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:36:58 +0000

Does HTML work for you, then? As long as it doesn’t require special software to open.

PDF is fine if you’re not reading something like House of Leaves, and if you’re reading House of Leaves, why are you reading it as an ebook?

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:35:12 +0000

This has been a fascinating discussion.

I am a new author with only one book published Nov. 1st, 2012. I have mixed feelings about Amazon’s ‘Select’ program and have been debating with myself whether or not to enroll.

The one thing I’d like to mention is the “exclusivity = bad” theory I keep hearing. I actually agree with it but what I think some people forget is that Amazon’s demand for exclusivity is not forever. It’s only for 90 days.

Given my situation – new author with minimal sales – it seems that trying the ‘Select’ program for 90 days and hopefully getting some visibility and reviews, then expanding my distribution is the best way to go.